


no witnesses

by dlm



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 14:20:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8894011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dlm/pseuds/dlm
Summary: Even if he closes his eyes shut, sunlight still leaks through. The sun rising is radiant enough, and so he blinks against the sky.There are no witnesses.





	

**Author's Note:**

> idk man this is just ...... ....how i imagined the aftermath of his first kill™. i listened 2 a lot of joji & keaton henson while writing this lmao

Even if he closes his eyes shut, sunlight still leaks through. The sun rising is radiant enough, and so he blinks against the sky.  
  
There are no witnesses.  
  
The ground is cold and tough against his fingers, and he lifts his hands up and inspects them. They're indented with pieces of dirt, and he brushes his hands against the fabric of his joggers.  
  
It's silent, still.  
  
Behind him, darkness yawns like an open cavern, fighting against the streaky sunlight filtering through the clouded sky. He feels tired, and he takes heavy breaths to compensate. His ears are red with the cold, and he tugs at one absentmindedly, as if to let blood circulate better.  
  
His gun lies beside him; muzzle pointed at nowhere. What was done is done.  
  
There isn't much left to say. Father had said that the first kill was always the hardest. He turns to face his sister, whose breaths are steady and even.  
  
She appears impassive, as always, and he wonders if she'll ever crack.  
  
She's the first to speak. "Are you alright?"  
  
"'m fine," Jacob mutters. He opens his mouth, and then closes it shut as an afterthought.  
  
"It's fine for you to be not okay," she says, and she reaches out to touch him.  
  
He flinches.  
  
"I'm fine, really.” The words sound hollow in his own ears. He abruptly stands up afterwards, sending gravel and dust flying. He rubs his eyes. His hands come away brown. "It's what we've been trained to do, right?" He hates the way his voice goes upwards at the end of his sentence, hates the way how Evie looks at him with something akin to sorrow and sympathy and sadness.  
  
He'd scrubbed his hands furiously before; had stuck his hands under the sink's running water until it had turned cold, and he hated how the water had continued to spurt from the tap, yet he still felt as though he had blood in the ridges of his skin, blood that was not his own mingling into his veins--  
  
"Breathe, Jacob," Evie says, into his shoulder. He's returned to the ground, he's curled himself up small, his teeth are chattering.  
  
He looks down at his still trembling fingers. "Are my hands clean?"  
  
"They are," she reassures him, and then, "it was hard for me, too."  
  
"I just wanted to get something right," he says.  
  
"You have," she laughs. It's a shaky thing. "There's one less templar out there."

It’s silent, still.

Life continues beyond the hill where he’d casually ended another’s. His thoughts feel like muddy water, like he’s stuck in rusty pipes somewhere, like he’s supposed to know how to proceed on his own. “Are we,” he says, and stops. “Are we going to continue like this?”

If Jacob stops himself to listen, he can almost hear the man he’d killed choke back blood and sweat, how he’d desperately clung at his feet.

It had gone horribly wrong--he had gone for a clean kill, like he’d been taught all his life, but the man had struggled in his arms, and that had caused his own death in the end.

He goes, “Nobody told me that Templars were _human_.” And it’s a ridiculous thing to say out loud, but somehow, somewhere in his mind, he’d always categorised them as simply that-- _Templars_. His entire life revolved around their extermination. About how they chose absolute chaos and how they believed that it was freedom. He thinks about how they had looked into chaos and called it god. He thinks about worshipping the intangible, thinks about his ancestors’ ancestors and the people that walked before him. He only realises that he’s been clenching his fist so tightly until he’s drawn blood; his palms leaking red under crescent-shaped indentations. He looks at his hand blankly, and wipes the stain on the ground.

His palms sting.

Evie remains silent. She’s typically shied away from physical contact--he’d always preferred showing affection through touch out of the two. Now, though, she pats him reassuringly, and he thinks about his mother. He feels guilty, sometimes, for not thinking about her as much as he’d like, but he wonders whether she’d still love him, despite this, whether she’d welcome him home.

It’s as if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud, because Evie suddenly says, “If mother married father, I’m sure she would love you, still.”

“Of course,” Jacob says, numbly.

The sun has completely risen. The pastel sky is now replaced with bright blues instead of muted shades of pink, and Jacob squints at the sun.

“Don’t stare at the sun,” Evie says.

“Am not,” he says, averting his gaze. If he blinks, he can see dark spots behind his eyes. The air feels damp, as though morning dew is being circulated around him. He feels his shirt stick against his skin. He wants to feel himself sink into water, feel himself be picked up by the currents. Instead, he lies flat on the ground and stares at the infinite horizon.

Evie copies him.

They lie down like that, the both of them breathing deeply.

“No witnesses?” He asks, after a considerable silence.

She shakes her head. Jacob can already imagine bits of gravel getting caught inside her hair as she does so. “No witnesses.”

He thinks about the earth growing under him, thinks about the earth being covered by asphalt, thinks about life being smothered.

He feels as though he’s failed, somehow, because he’s not, he’s not supposed to have his mind go around in circles like this, he can’t survive like this, and yet.

“I could never get a job elsewhere, though.” he says, a beat later. It’s the funny truth. This is all he’s ever known. The Creed follows him; grows in his heart like some sort of tumour, and he thinks, _nothing is true_ , and he thinks--

“Neither of us could.”

It seems like a fever dream, now, but all that he’s left with is a plastic taste in his mouth and the corresponding steel in his lungs.

He breathes out.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on twit!!! [@pixeldad](http://twitter.com/pixeldad)


End file.
